Under a blue sky with a bright shining sun the 8th and last stage of Paris-Nice 2009 took place today.

After the surprise he created yesterday, the Spanish rider Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) manages to take the final yellow jersey with exactly one minute on the rider from Luxembourg, Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank).

The route

After a start at 11h35 (initially planned at 11h25) this last stage was quite light with only 119 kilometers between the start which had been transformed in the finish line in the mean time at the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.

In these 119 kilometers there were no less than three difficulties, all of the first category: the Col de la Porte (7,2 km @ 7,2%), the climb to La Turbie (7,6 km @ 4,8%) and on the circuit around Eze the Col d'Eze (4,1 km @ 6,8%).

The two intermediate sprints at Plan du Var and in Eze didn't change much in the ranking by points. In this short stage there was no feeding zone.

The story of the stage

At 11h35 the riders started from the Promenade des Anglais. The Dutch rider Bram Tankink (Rabobank, photo) was the only one who didn't start, so 119 riders were at the start of this last stage. David Millar (Garmin Slipstream) fell during the stage and had to give up.

At the first sprint, Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank) - 3pts/3", Rinaldo Nocentini (AG2R La Mondiale) - 2pts/2" and Christian Knees - 1pt/1" (Milram) took the points, without any real impact on the ranking by points.

Somewhere around kilometer 25 a group of 25 riders was formed at front, later on joined by Alberto Contador (Astana) just after kilometer 41. A few kilometers further Alberto Contador and four other riders (David Lopez Garcia (Caisse d'Epargne), Sandy Casar (Française des Jeux), Rein Taaramae (Cofidis) and Aitor Hernandez (Euskaltel-Euskadi)) decided to attack while the yellow jersey, Luis Léon Sanchez, has to cope with two flat tyres.

The group of 5 rapidly loses Aitor Hernandez while Alberto Contador (photo) leads the group during almost the whole climb of the Col de la Porte. At the top of the Col de la Porte the group with Luis Léon Sanchez is at 2'05" behind the group with Alberto Contador. When they start the climb to La Turbie the difference has dropped to only 30 seconds while when they started the climb of the Col d'Eze the difference was down to 20 seconds. Contador thus decided to attack again at 19 kilometers from the finish while in the group of the yellow jersey, the Saxo Bank (for the second place of Frank Schleck) and Caisse d'Epargne teams worked together to catch up with Contador.

A little bit later Antonio Colom (Katusha), Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) and Cadel Evans (Silence Lotto) got away from the peloton. At 10 kilometers they were at only 5 seconds behind Alberto Contador while Luis Léon Sanchez and Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) also tried to catch up and were at 10 seconds behind Contador.
Schleck and Colom took back Contador while Sanchez and Hivert took Evans and were at 12 seconds behind the leaders of the race.

Finally Antonio Colom (Katusha) accelerated at the right time at around 100 meters before the finish (photos) to win the stage in a sprint with Alberto Contador who finished just in front of Frank Schleck.





The sprint with Antonio Colom and Alberto Contador

Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) finsihed 4th and the French 2007 champion, Christophe Moreau (Agritubel), 5th (photo).

The sprint for the fourth place, won by Jonathan Hivert

>> Check out my photos of the last stage Nice > Nice of Paris-Nice 2009.

The rankings

You discovered the rankings of all stages in the past days during Paris-Nice and below you can find the final rankings after the last stage today.

General ranking (yellow jersey)
1/ Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne, photo) - 30h 53' 51"
2/ Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) - 30h 54' 51" / + 01' 00"
3/ Sylvain Chavanel (QuickStep) - 30h 55' 00" / + 01' 09"
4/ Alberto Contador (Astana) - 30h 55' 15" / + 01' 24"
5/ Antonio Colom (Katusha) - 30h 55' 38" / + 01' 47"
6/ Jens Voigt (Saxo Bank) - 30h 55' 50" / + 01' 59"
7/ Kevin Seeldrayers (QuickStep) - 30h 56' 20" / + 02' 29"
8/ Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) - 30h 56' 48" / + 02' 57"
9/ Yury Trofimov (BBox Bouygues Telecom) - 30h 57' 28" / + 03' 37"
10/ Christophe Le Mével (Française des Jeux) - 30h 57' 51" / + 04' 00"

Ranking by points (green jersey)
1/ Sylvain Chavanel (QuickStep, photo) - 94 pts
2/ Alberto Contador (Astana) - 84 pts
3/ Antonio Colom (Katusha) - 76 pts
4/ Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) - 75 pts
5/ Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) - 71 pts

Team ranking
1/ Saxo Bank - 92h 52' 45"
2/ Française des Jeux - 93h 03' 14" / + 10' 29"
3/ Caisse d'Epargne - 93h 06' 43" / + 13' 58"
4/ Euskaltel-Euskadi - 93h 07' 59" / + 15' 14"
5/ QuickStep - 93h 10' 08" / + 17' 23"

Best climber (polka dot jersey)
1/ Tony Martin (Columbia High Road, photo) - 55 pts
2/ Alberto Contador (Astana) - 48 pts
3/ Jérémy Roy (Française des Jeux) - 32 pts
4/ Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) - 22 pts
5/ Joan Horrach (Katusha) - 21 pts

Best young rider (white jersey)
1/ Kevin Seeldrayers (QuickStep) - 30h 56' 20"
2/ Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) - 30h 56' 48" / + 00' 28"
3/ Yury Trofimov (BBox Bouygues Telecom) - 30h 57' 28" / + 01' 08"
4/ Pierre Rolland (BBox Bouygues Telecom) - 31h 06' 48" / + 10' 28"
5/ Jakob Fuglsang (Saxo Bank) - 31h 15' 18" / + 18' 58"
6/ Thomas Peterson (Garmin Slipstream) - 31h 16' 50" / + 20' 30"
7/ Matthieu Ladagnous (Française des Jeux) - 31h 21' 58" / + 25' 38"
8/ Albert Timmer (Skil-Shimano) - 31h 22' 39" / + 26' 19"
9/ Chris Sorensen (Saxo Bank) - 31h 24' 27" / + 28' 07"
10/ Rein Taaramae (Cofidis) - 31h 25' 09" / + 28' 49"

The video

Below you can find a video of the last few kilometers of the last stage of the 67th edition of Paris-Nice.

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Paris-Nice

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